Motherless Child Read online

  There was indeed a skylight. Flat, latchless. Below them lay the overstuffed bins and skatewheel-scuffed linoleum floors of Jellytown, quite possibly the last and certainly the largest non-chain, half-decent record store in the Carolinas.

  “So close…” Natalie muttered.

  “Just break it,” said Sophie. Put her hand on the glass.

  The burglar alarm blasted both of them back on their asses, sent them scurrying over the roof, down the fire-escape stairs three at a time. Sophie actually leapt over the last landing rail, plunged the final eight feet, landed hard, and straightened up, laughing.

  “Ow!” she shouted. Hands flying to her ears as the alarm wailed and Natalie threw herself into the GTO and gunned the engine. They fled into the dark.

  Laughing. Both of them laughing.

  And stopped on a rural route, miles from town, behind yet another shit motel. Not in the parking lot, but on the edge of the tobacco field out back. Natalie half-thought she could still hear the scream of the alarm, bleeding into the whistling in her ears. To her own amazement, she was still laughing.

  She turned to Sophie. “What now, Mr. President?”

  Sophie grinned. “Well, I know what we should have done.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “Waited for the cops.”

  “Huh. Wow. Hadn’t thought of that. Good plan.”

  “Waited for them to get up on that roof with us.”

  “And gone to jail? That’s what we should have done?”

  “Made eye contact,” Sophie said.

  Which stopped Natalie’s laughing. “Made eye contact.”

  “Come on. It’s a good plan.”

  “Too good,” Natalie said. Checked her wallet. A few hundred dollars from her cleared-out bank account. Enough for two nights more. Three, if they used less gas. She gestured at the hotel. “Let’s go in. I’m tired.”

  Sophie looked genuinely surprised. “You are?”

  And Natalie shook her head. At least she wasn’t crying. Or even close to crying. Just for the moment. “Sophie, I have no idea what I am.”

  The next night, they waited until 10:30—an hour after closing time—before Natalie drove them to the same alley where they’d parked before. This time, instead of going to the roof, they walked straight out to the street.

  A different place from twenty-four hours ago. Not exactly teeming. But there were college kids—the ones who lived local or went to school year-round—clustered around beer pitchers on the two tables outside the Gamecock Den in the summer night, and a couple of pickup trucks full of good ol’ boys, one of them streaming a giant Confederate flag from a roof rack, cruising back and forth.

  Keeping their heads down, Natalie and Sophie walked straight through the college kids. Conversation stilled in their wake. But no one said anything to them or reached for them. One of the trucks slowed on its pass, and one of the good ol’ boys screamed something drunken out the window. But that could have been at the two boys defiantly—bravely, Natalie thought—holding hands, just at the edge of the knot of collegians. Keeping their own heads down.

  “Right on,” Natalie murmured to the boys as she passed. And one of them looked up. Rippled in place, as though she were a breeze that had blown through. She hurried ahead to the door of the record store.

  They’d timed their arrival just right. Sixty minutes after closing. Long enough for the store to empty of loiterers, Friday-night stragglers, employees. Except the one closing. Ringing out the cash registers. Doing the last upstocks and bin checks. There she was.

  Not someone Natalie knew, she was relieved to see. Punching numbers into a computer at the back counter. Weirdly waif-like, pale-haired woman, older than the usual Jellytown employee, but not too much older. Thirty, maybe. Obsidian stud in her right nostril. Pince-nez pushed far enough up her nose that Natalie suspected the woman was actually using them for more than decoration. Frumpy white blouse open at the long, pale neck.

  Natalie knocked. Knocked again. The woman didn’t look up. Knew better. Was clearly a Jellytown Friday night vet. Sophie was the one who finally got her attention. By squashing herself fully against the glass, arms upraised, legs apart, as though she were being frisked. And then rattling, so that the glass shuddered. The woman glanced up. Locked eyes with Sophie. Who mouthed, Please.

  Unnecessarily, it turned out. Waif woman had already stumbled out from behind the counter, paisley ankle-scraper skirt so long on her, it looked almost bridal.

  “Oh, wow, we’re Mr. Snivelly,” Natalie said.

  “What?” Sophie asked. Still pinioned against the glass. Not releasing the waif woman from her gaze.

  “Remember, I told you about him. When I worked here. That guy who’d show up right when we were leaving, once a month or so, and try to sell us bootleg CDs out of his car trunk? The guy who kept asking for tissues, and blowing his nose? Every single time we saw him?”

  Behind the glass, waif woman knelt, her skirt spreading around her as though she were melting into it, and turned the floor-level lock. Still staring back at Sophie, she reached up—her body brushing the other side of the glass, directly opposite Sophie’s, the glass the only thing between them—and turned the top lock. Pulled the door open. Natalie and Sophie slipped inside.

  “Thank you,” Sophie whispered. “Thank you so much.” Then she tugged the woman off toward the front counter, laughing, saying something about loving the obsidian, while Natalie shook her head, moved to the bins.

  She did her work fast. Didn’t want to risk overstaying. Wasn’t sure how she’d pay yet. She went for basics. A used Stax-Volt box, missing a disc and therefore cheap. Two fifties budget Sun collections. A not-cheap Judy Roderick reissue she’d actually been hunting for months. At the end of the Used, she had a tidy stack, thought she wouldn’t even bother with the New, not this time. She already had plenty, months’ worth. She looked up. Stopped still.

  Waif woman had somehow retreated behind the cash registers. But she was also leaning all the way over the counter. So that she could weave her hands through Sophie’s hair. While Sophie brushed her own fingers through the woman’s white-blond wisps. Down the long, long neck. Sophie was saying something. The woman, too. Natalie realized she couldn’t even imagine what that conversation might be. And the feelings that coursed through her as she stood there, watching … she couldn’t have imagined those, either. Could barely even make sense of them.

  Those touches. So soft. Sweet-soft. And warm. Heartbeat warm. The eyes. Light leaping back and forth from the woman’s to Sophie’s. Longing-light. Jesus, Natalie thought, am I jealous?

  Sophie leaned in and kissed the waif woman at the edge of her mouth. Then square in the middle of it.

  “All right, think I’m all set,” Natalie announced, louder than she needed to, her voice shrill in the otherwise silent store. She moved fast to the counter, as Sophie and the woman stayed locked. Didn’t part.

  Didn’t part.

  Drew back. Sophie drew back, right as Natalie arrived at her side, and stopped. Astounded. She stared, not at Sophie, now, but at the waif woman.

  At her thin, translucent lower lip. The tiny line of blood trickling from it. From where Sophie had nipped it.

  “Did you mean to do that?” Natalie whispered.

  And Sophie stumbled back. Not licking her lips. Shuddering. Shaking her head. “I just…” she said. Shook her shoulders, hard. “It was just … I wanted to see … It wasn’t for anything.…” She stopped against the New Release listening station. Stood there.

  While the waif woman watched. And smiled, slowly. Shyly.

  Natalie shuddered. “How much do I owe you? I want to make sure I have enough,” she said. Loneliness sifting down over her like dust motes. So much of it in the air. As always. Only now …

  “What?” said the waif woman, and stirred. Blinked behind her pince-nez. Pushed them back into place. “Oh.” She looked up. Saw Natalie’s eyes. The tears in them. She didn’t lunge forward or even lean fo
rward. But her smile widened. “It’s okay. Take them. It’s not so much.”

  “Won’t you get in trou—”

  “It’s okay. You need them.”

  Whatever that meant, Natalie thought. What could this woman see? Or any of them? And suddenly, sadly, she knew how she and Sophie would solve the money issue. That there wasn’t really a money issue. Because how much did they need, really? Less than anyone we met would give.

  As long as Sophie and I stay frugal. And careful. Don’t take advantage. At least, no more advantage than we have to. Give something in return, when we can. Because the woman is right. Natalie really does need these.…

  “Thank you,” she said. Meaning it.

  The waif woman shivered, then. All the way down to her draped ankles. She watched Natalie take the discs. Watched Sophie move to the door. Smiling all the while. Sophie had recovered herself, was smiling back.

  “It’s not just the eyes,” she murmured, as they moved outside.

  “No?” said Natalie. Discs clutched to her chest. The street out there already emptying. The people heading home, or to each other’s homes. Leaving the too-late hours to travelers.

  “And it’s not just them. The people, I mean.”

  Natalie glanced at her friend as they stood on the sidewalk, in the light from the Jellytown window. She thought of the waif woman’s smile. You need them, she’d said. And Natalie had almost … had wanted to tell her …

  “No,” she said. “You’re right.”

  “Because I felt it, too. We’re attracted to them. Them to us. The living to the de—”

  “Differently living,” Natalie cut her off.

  And Sophie glanced up. Flashed that new, sadder version of her smile. “Differently living.”

  As they moved away, each of them looked back, once. Both of them saw the waif woman at the door with the keys in her hand. Blood on her mouth. Pince-nez down her nose. Leaning, slightly, toward the street. Out of herself. Like a tide the moon has tugged in passing. Influenced momentarily.

  Touched, the only way it could. Before vanishing into the dark.

  6

  Just once, under cover of a late-evening thunderstorm, while the Whistler showered and hummed songs to his Destiny or whatever he was calling her, Mother slipped out to her truck with the intention of phoning her sister. But instead of actually doing it, she just sat in the cab while rain rocked the roof, watching water droplets shatter on the windscreen, scatter uselessly over the cracked asphalt of the endless road spooling out into the country. Which wasn’t endless after all, that road. Just another loop, doubling endlessly back to where it began.

  His Destiny.

  In a way, Mother had to admire him. And, worse, pity him. And worse still—even now, after all this time, the years and years and years of looping endlessly back and back and back …

  No. She didn’t feel that anymore. Imagining that she did—or ever had—would make her just like him. Pathetic little moon-calf, still howling and whistling after a sensation he somehow continued to believe was not only out there but waiting for him. Coming for him. Mother couldn’t remember that far back—would never have tried—but she did wonder if that quality in him was what had caught her attention in the first place. Had made whatever happened … happen … when they didn’t die. Didn’t simply burst, like little thunderclouds, and empty all that trapped liquid they imagined to be themselves into her mouth.

  She looked down at the phone in her lap. Tried to remember the last time she’d heard anyone’s voice but the Whistler’s through it. And realized that there had been no such time. Not on this phone. And yet, there was the number, not so much springing to her mind as etched there. Permanent and part of her, like an epitaph on a tombstone.

  Which was ridiculous, really. Seeing that the number couldn’t have been more than five years old. And that Mother had never once used it. Just noted it, the one time it had appeared on her Call List. She hadn’t answered. Wasn’t even sure Aunt Sally herself would have been on the other end, if she had.

  And yet, they were Sally’s numbers. The numbers Sally always used. Sally and her numbers. Mother had never been sure whether Aunt Sally actually believed in the game—system, religion, whatever—she’d taught them all. For choosing. For going on. Policy.

  But whether she believed in Policy or not, Mother knew, Sally believed in the numbers.

  Aunt Sally. Who was no one’s aunt, though she really might have been actual mother to them all. Just maybe. Just as Mother was no one’s mother, never had been. Wasn’t Aunt Sally’s sister, either, though that’s what Sally had called her, all that time they’d traveled together. Running Policy. Guiding the others.

  Sister.

  To her own amazement, Mother found the phone at her ear, Sally’s numbers already pressed, before she shut it down just as the connection went through.

  Had it gone through? And would Sally see that in her own call window, flickering momentarily, barely there, like a signal flare?

  Would she call back?

  For a stunned moment, Mother waited. Stared at the phone. Hoping? Was she hoping?

  But the phone didn’t ring. To Mother’s immense relief.

  Because what would Mother have said? Well, it took eighty years, sis, but you were right?

  And what would Aunt Sally have said? Something wise, no doubt. And soothing, and important. Like, Yes.

  And then? Would Sally have come up here? To wherever they were? The thought made Mother snort. She wondered when Aunt Sally had last left the Delta. And realized, in a burst of jagged laughter that actually hurt, that the answer was never. Whoever Aunt Sally had been … whatever she was now … she’d been born there. And she would never—could never—leave.

  Whereas I, Mother thought, laughter still hanging in her throat like the back end of a cough. I can go anywhere. With anyone. Travel the endless loop of road and road around and around, like a wing on wind.

  No. Like wind. Something that blows over and through. Bends sideways. Catches and whirls. Lays waist.

  Keeps going.

  Returning the phone to the glove box, Mother glanced through the rain toward the hotel, then laughed again. There he was. Little boy. Her little boy. The one she’d made but not birthed. Traveled with. Eaten with. Somehow not just passed but filled time with. The way people did.

  She supposed, in a way—in the only way, she suspected, once you stripped out the dreaming and longing and singing and whistling—they’d had love.

  Still did. In a new way. Because he was still standing there. Gazing out into the rain with a towel on his shoulders and his permanently hat-flattened, stringy hair dangling down over his eyes. Wondering where she’d gone. When she’d be back. Looking for his mother.

  Well, okay, Little One, she thought. Straightening in her seat. Staring through the wet as though sighting down a rifle barrel. You just sit tight.

  Mother’s coming.

  7

  Three weeks later …

  “You know,” Sophie called out the car window toward where Natalie stood just off the highway shoulder, “this was more fun when it was a challenge.” Then she pushed the red-haired guy’s head back down between her legs. “That’s it,” she told him, patting him, moaning a little—though more, Natalie suspected, for the guy’s benefit than from any real sensation—and leaning her own head back. “Good dog.”

  Instead of answering, Natalie stepped through the curtain of Spanish moss hanging off the roadside oaks into the forest. It really was like stepping through a waterfall into a fairyland, the moss as much deflecting as reflecting the moonlight, turning everything into its own negative. She spread out her arms, imagined the moss draping her, too, transforming her into a Natalie-shaped shadow.

  “Ooh, not that I’m complaining,” Sophie cooed.

  Eddie, Natalie thought, closed her eyes, kept her arms outstretched, resisted the urge to fold them into herself. She wanted to feel, yet again, the full force of the emptiness there, where her chi
ld had been. To know it was permanent. She needed to know that, if she hoped to go on. If she did.

  “Hurry up,” she called back, after a while.

  “Well, okay, hang on,” Sophie said. “Have to thank my new friend here.”

  Which wasn’t a Sophie-ism, Natalie knew. Not yet. For tonight—still—Sophie meant only that she was going to send her evening’s toy home ravished and grateful. And living.

  A short time later, Sophie joined her in the clearing. For a while, they didn’t speak. Sophie settled on her rumpled skirt in the pine needles and dirt, and the cicadas sang, not to them but around them. Only the moon moved, very slowly. And the moss. Lazily. Imperceptibly, except to the trees. A kinder vampire than the one they’d met. Not that the Whistler had been unkind, really. Except for killing them.

  “Do you think light screams when you drink it?” Sophie asked, and Natalie was startled by how closely even their thoughts now ran together.

  “When the trees drink it, you mean?”

  “Whoever.” With a flourish, Sophie finished etching her name, in cursive, in the forest floor with a stick.

  Natalie watched her friend lean back, catch the moonlight on her neck and roll it down into her blouse, fold her legs up to her chest. “Sophie, did that…” she started, and felt almost shy for a second before realizing how ridiculous that was. “Does it still feel good to you? The guys, I mean.”

  Now Sophie looked startled, almost guilty. After a moment, she shrugged. “It feels warm.”

  “Yeah,” Natalie said.

  “Especially their mouths.”

  Which was exactly right. Mostly, these last few nights, Natalie found herself hovering around their lips, in the same way she’d once crouched beside the tiny space heater her mother used, on surprisingly frigid Charlotte winter nights, to heat the trailer. That, apparently, was what sex would be about from now on. The ghost of tingling. Mostly heat.

  “Upside-down cake,” Sophie said.